Terry Cassreino moved from relentless reporter covering the Mississippi Legislature to one of the best high school journalism teachers in the South.

Cassreino graduated from Ole Miss in 1985 with degrees in journalism and radio-television. He then made a mark for the Biloxi Sun-Herald as one of the most aggressive political and government reporters working at the Capitol.

The New Orleans native and devoted Saints fan is in his ninth year teaching at Madison’s St. Joseph Catholic High School. On the side, he is churning up an argument with the National Football League over the pass interference and helmet-to-helmet no-call that cost the Saints a berth in the Super Bowl.

In this file photo, journalism instructor Terry Cassreino, right, speaks to former students, clockwise from bottom, Jean-Nicolette Nixon, Frances Huff and Jack Olstad as they work on pages for a school yearbook at St. Joseph Catholic High School.(Photo11: C. Todd Sherman/The Clarion-Ledger)

Cassreino started a petition drive a day after the Saints lost the famous no-call game to the Los Angeles Rams in the Superdome. A pathetic NFL refereeing crew didn’t call the penalty on the Rams as the Saints were driving toward glorious victory.

Cassreino's entreaty asks the NFL for a re-match between the teams because “it is the only fair solution to this travesty of epic proportions.” Cassreino never was one for understatement; he liked going for the jugular. “This game was stolen, flat stolen by the refs,” he told the Jackson CBS-TV affiliate, WJTV.

What he admits was a joke at the start has turned into an all-out assault on the pro league with more than a quarter of a million signatures. A few hours after he first posted the petition, his wife awoke him with the amazing news that it had almost 10,000 signed backers. He thought it might have been 100.

Cassreino never anticipated a response from the NFL, even after the petition had gone viral on social media and he had appeared on several news show in New Orleans and Jackson — and even Los Angeles. He knew there would be no re-match.

Cassreino was a dogged reporter for the Biloxi Sun-Herald from 1985 to 2000, later working for other newspapers before dabbling in Democratic Party politics. As the Coast newspaper’s Capitol correspondent, he specialized in scathing investigative-type reports that brought many regional lawmakers under scrutiny. He didn’t take that job to make friends among members of the Legislature or the lobbyists who work in the building as consultants on various issues.

When I worked for the Clarion Ledger at the Capitol, he and I were jammed into a door by a lobbyist as we sought to enter the House Speaker’s office to ask about a bill the lobbyist was hired to get passed. He threatened to whip both of us. He got over it when we didn't turn and run. Once, a Coast lawmaker threatened to "strangle" Cassreino on Press Row. Another assaulted him at a game in Oxford.

In 1996 after the legislative session ended, a movie production crew took over the Capitol for a few months to film “The Chamber,” a John Grisham thriller about a young lawyer (Chris O’Donnell) who tried to get his Ku Klux Klan-firebombing grandfather (Gene Hackman) saved from death row at Parchman (he didn’t).

Universal Pictures hired me and Cassreino to play reporters in the film. We were in a scene shot with nice-guy O’Donnell, but our hopes to move on to Hollywood died on the cutting room floor. We returned to real reporting.

Cassreino later entered the Ole Miss “Teach Mississippi Institute” and began his career at St. Joseph in 2011, first in English, then journalism. The rest is history and legendary. His students have swept practically all the top awards in the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association every year since his arrival, and Cassreino has been named “Journalism Adviser of the Year” four times.

Mac Gordon(Photo11: Special to Clarion Ledger)

Journalism has taken its lumps in recent years with staff cutbacks and coverage-area reductions. If ever there is a return to the vitality of the past in that business, it's likely that Cassreino’s students will be among those leading the charge.